Maybe in the original timeline Jack & Co. never returned to the Island, so Dan wen't out to find the Hostiles by himself and got shot. Maybe Eloise hoped that by sending Jack & the rest back that she could change the outcome, but unfortunately she didnt.

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If this were the case, why didn't she say to Jack "by the way, could you tell Daniel not to run into the Hostile camp and put a gun on Richard Alpert so he doesn't get executed?"

^^^ I don't buy that. These are people armed with knowledge about events to come. If they want, they can change things. You can argue that the consequences would be so severe that they wouldn't want to change things. But, that's very different than saying they can't.

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To assume they can alter the past is to assume they weren't in the past originally. If they went back in time because they were always back in time, then they can only do what they always do. They have free will, but their free will causes what happens later. If they weren't always there, then the very fact that they're in the past alters the past (so they could alter it further).

I think the reason people are confused is they keep mentioning "the original timeline". If there is only one timeline, there is no timeline to be altered.

^^^ I don't buy that. These are people armed with knowledge about events to come. If they want, they can change things. You can argue that the consequences would be so severe that they wouldn't want to change things. But, that's very different than saying they can't.

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To assume they can alter the past is to assume they weren't in the past originally.

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That's not true at all. They are back in time but they have knowledge of the future. There currently is one timeline but they can force another. That's what we're talking about here, creating a new timeline. Or maybe, they enter a parrallel universe. The original universe stays intact but they effectively create a new one?

My take is that Faraday was deluding himself thinking he could change the past after three years of desperation, and that it will be proven you CAN'T change the past.

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Yeah, I'm guessing that part of the endgame of the series may be about the losties trying to prevent their own plane from crashing in the first place, but it won't happen. As Locke said early in the season "I needed that pain, to get to where I am now". They'll eventually come to realize that they needed to crash on that island, and it would be a mistake to undo it, even if they could.

Also, on another topic, Faraday has to already have been born by 1977 if he's a professor at Oxford in 1996, no? So did he spend his early years on the island? Was he living off-island, and Hawking went back and forth to the mainland or something?

^^^ I don't buy that. These are people armed with knowledge about events to come. If they want, they can change things. You can argue that the consequences would be so severe that they wouldn't want to change things. But, that's very different than saying they can't.

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To assume they can alter the past is to assume they weren't in the past originally.

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That's not true at all. They are back in time but they have knowledge of the future. There currently is one timeline but they can force another. That's what we're talking about here, creating a new timeline. Or maybe, they enter a parrallel universe. The original universe stays intact but they effectively create a new one?

Mr Awe

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You're missing my point. How can they force another if they were always there back in time in the first? They always had knowledge of the future and always took actions with that in mind. It's not that they can cause different results to take place. They already used their free will to create the future we know. From our perspective, these events took place in the 70s, even if that isn't the case from their perspective.

The other theory (that they can take actions to change time) is certainly a plausible one and the characters right now are proceeding with that in mind (because it makes the episodes more dramatic and suspenseful). It could be true that Farraday's original theory was wrong. But my guess is that it isn't. The past always happened and they were always part of it.

Errr, I can only give this one an Average - didn't realize till now the guy who plays Daniel is a fairly awful actor - but Excellent for the plotline that this ep sets up going into the season finale stretch, and of course for the What The FRAK logo treatment.

I don't know, Jack's had quite a bit of experience with guns over the last few seasons. And maybe after he got off the island he realized it was a good idea to learn how to better defend himself. He might have been taking lessons. He was the one who realized right off the bat that they would have to lie about what happened on the island and that if they didn't then people might have come after them. No matter what people might think of Jack, he's always been pretty damn smart. And it would be smart of him to learn how to use guns after what he had been through.